


Only Hope

by BritaniaVance



Series: Rebellions are Built on Hope [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Organa Family Feels, a little something for Carrie and Billie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-22 21:56:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13176015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BritaniaVance/pseuds/BritaniaVance
Summary: In loving memory of our space princess, Carrie Fisher.





	Only Hope

It was easier to keep herself busy these days. Leia couldn’t afford the luxury of wallowing - she never had. Not when she left her father that last time on Yavin IV, a heavy hand on her shoulder as he uttered the details of the last mission he would bestow upon her and the last words of wisdom he would bequeath upon his only daughter. Not when she saw her planet burst before her waking, unbelieving eyes, everyone she had ever known and loved disintegrated into nothing but a glittering burst of stardust, only to be consumed again by the blackness that existed only between stars. Not when she sent her son away despite the nightmares and the wash of worry that came over her when she heard the news of what he had done. Leia was never one to breathe, and she wasn’t going to allow herself a moment now. She would swallow her sorrow and carry forward, as she always had. If her son had given her anything, it was something to distract her from what he himself had done. At least she had that. At least she had the Resistance.

  
Time resumed and agents milled about her, running errands, exchanging notes and updates, either oblivious to Leia’s lapse or willing to act as if they had not just witnessed their fearless General lost in thought. Either one suited her just fine, as long as they didn’t talk about it. She was allowed moments here and there if she was feeling generous, and if Leia should have been generous with anyone it was with herself, and that was saying something.

  
Despite the feelings washing over her and fast dissipating, the scene unfolding before her eyes made her heart swell, as much as she didn’t want to admit it or give it too much meaning. They needed hope, perhaps Leia most of all, but hope could also be used against them, against _her_ , and she knew too much of it could crush the dream before it could come to fruition. But wasn’t the Resistance just the runoff of another dream? Another hope she had long ago, when the Empire was the thing to overcome? And what of the time before that?

  
She sighed, already tired with it all, and sick of her own brain working against her. She thought of Han, she thought of Luke, and all the others she had aligned herself with over the years, hearts she felt akin to when it came to a brighter future, a better one.

  
“General Organa?”

  
A voice broke her out of her reverie, a sweet almost sing-song with a veneer of toughness, a soft heart donning armor. It sounded so familiar, and yet-

  
“General Organa, if you just have a moment, I’d hate to interrupt you but-“

  
Leia returned to the present again, smiling beside herself and her lapse of awareness, too full of worry and regret and heavy with memory. As if she needed another reminder that she was getting older. Bail would have laughed, eyes crinkling just where the white met his temples, his black hair turning grey. Leia was well past the salt and pepper now, but a glint of gold caught her attention, twin buns fastened to an eager head, warm, brown eyes looking up at her beneath a well-kept fringe.

  
“Lieutenant Connix,” Leia finally said, coming to herself in full. The girl smiled shyly, looking up at her, eyes still unsure, with a datapad held precariously in her small hands. _She must still be so young_ , Leia thought to herself, conjuring an image of a younger self, clad all in white and a hairstyle not unlike the one Connix donned now.

  
Leia took the datapad and examined it, reading the words but not soaking them in, her mind still elsewhere, displaced in time.

  
Connix began speaking, relaying the details in a full debriefing, perhaps not for Leia’s benefit but out of the belief that she had better things to do than actually read. That wasn’t the case, but in a way it was, and Leia’s wandering mind thought of her mother, twin buns held tightly aloft above her youthful face, wearing a dark plum dress in the din of the senate chambers, a renowned speaker in the Republic of old. Bail had watched her, then, a colleague and a friend. And beside Leia now, history made itself again, ghosts incarnate reigniting the same dream, keeping hope alive.

  
Leia nodded sagely, soaking in her lieutenant’s words as they slowly trickled into her consciousness, a skill she found useful these days when her mind preferred to worry and wander and the rest wasn’t quite keen to keep up. A kaleidoscope of her thoughts, the past, and the present collapsed and collided in on itself, a multitude of worlds unfolding before her very eyes, and Leia knew - she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Not ever. She was exactly where she needed to be.


End file.
